Oscars 2017: 20 Predicted Best Film Nominees Ranked Worst To Best
7. Nocturnal Animals
Seven years after his Oscar-nominated debut A Single Man, fashion designer/director Tom Ford returned last year with a film that might not be as entirely brilliant but which is utterly engrossing, clever and features some remarkable performances from an assured and brilliantly cast team of actors.
The story is deliciously meta - as Amy Adams' gallery owner receives a manuscript from her ex-husband jake Gyllenhaal, which is deliriously violent, pulpy and beautifully ripe for adaptation itself, and interprets it as a threat to her. The tiered story unveils like two entirely different siblings, united by Ford's stylistic flare and his unrelenting approach to drama and emotion.
All of the central performances deserve praise - particularly Michael Shannon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson - the former of whom is cutting and self-aware, while the other is peculiar but just as captivating. They, and this curious, hard to classify film will both linger in the memory when distant reflections on 2016 come up.